Saturday, October 25, 2014

Please Help Save Funding for the Swedish Institutes at Athens, Rome and Istanbul

Thank you to CAES board member Linda Emanuel for sharing this. We hope you can take a moment to sign the petition. If your Swedish is a bit rusty, never fear: a nice "tutorial" is included below the petition link.

Dear
colleagues,

Yesterday the Swedish Government announced that they will
end all state funding for the Swedish Institutes at Athens, Rome and Istanbul
from 2017. Our research Institutes have no private funding and will therefore
have to close down and terminate their work within two
years.

The decision has been made without
any prior consultation or investigation of the consequences: the Institutes
will not be able to fulfill their responsibilities of taking care of
archaeological material or sites in the Mediterranean and providing education
with the fields of Classical Archaeology, Classics, Art History, Architecture
and Social sciences, nor to conduct and publish research, give conferences, host
cultural activities, take part in heritage management or run our research
libraries in the Mediterranean countries.

The decision would
be a huge tragedy for Classical research and education in Sweden and we ask you
to consider signing the petition against it: